The Bushes' Ruling Class (Bush I)

A 1992 Common Cause Magazine Investigation Reveals A Pattern Of Special Favors For Former President G.H.W. Bush's Inner Circle Of $100,000 Donors. Apparently nothing has changed—except for the worse—since his tenure a quarter of a century ago, as Junior's administration has shown itself even more blatantly corrupt.

NOTE: While this Common Cause report lays out the pattern of corruption and favoritism that is typical of most US administrations, stressing the specific favors received by a number of individuals and financial groups, it should be kept in mind that while some in the upper echelons were certainly "preferred", the US government operates first and foremost in the interest of the rich, as a class, so everyone in that social category benefited, at the expense of the rest of the nation, and —quite often—the world. If there is any difference between the Bushes and other administrations, it is that the Bush clan has been been more impudent in its class biases. A further point worth considering is that, while Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, Tom DeLay and the rest of the rightwing politicians were just errand boys for the ruling class, mere front salesmen for its policies (albeit well rewarded), the Bushes are the ruling class.

The Bush family. Much to be happy about, indeed.

Where's Coppola when we need him?

OVERVIEW

Introduction • The Inner Circle • Watergate Redux • SHORT CIRCUIT: Did Team 100 operate with a different set of rules, or did it just seem that way? • Power Play • Hotwired • Trust Fuss • Charge It• Farmed Out • WELFARE FOR FAT CATS: How Team 100 Members Got And Protected Government Giveaways. • "Water Is Like Democracy" • White Lighting • Gas Attack

TRADING FAVORS: Blocking Imports, Pushing Exports: Whatever Worked Best For Team 100 Members • Tobacco Diplomacy • BUSH'S CORPORATE CABINET: Export Council Members Clearly Were Not Chosen For Their Expertise • LANDED GENTRY: A Quarter Of Team 100 Hailed From The Real Estate Industry. When They Talked, Bush Listened • Regulator End-Run LET'S BE FRIENDS: From Wall Street To The Oilfields, Bush Wanted What His Donors Wanted. • Fill 'Er Up • North To Alaska • Seeing Eye To Eye • Send A Cable • The Kravis Connection • Money Gambits • Banking On Disaster • Isn't This [Wasn't That] Illegal?

At a California campaign fundraiser in February, then-President Bush asked Howard Leach, a wealthy Salinas farm investor, what worried the local citizenry. Water, Leach said. Because of the lengthy drought, the Interior Department had cut off agribusiness's subsidized federal water from the Central Valley Project, a massive system of dams and reservoirs. Bush "was obviously sensitive to this," Leach says. "He clearly was interested and sympathetic."

Ten days later, the president unveiled a 326 billion-gallon emergency allocation of Central Valley water for local growers -- enough to serve five million urban customers for 18 months. With one quick move, Bush reversed the Interior Department's plan to release no water that spring.

Naturally, regional growers were pleased. But none could have been happier than the single largest user of Central Valley Project water, the controversial land trust operated by long-time Leach acquaintance J.G. Boswell and his son James W. To a much smaller extent it also helped Leach's old friend Howard Marguleas and his produce marketing firm Sun World International, which grows fruit on a 960-acre Central Valley spread.

Leach, James Boswell and Marguleas have something else in common: All three are members of President Bush's Team 100, the 249 wealthy indi-viduals who ponied up at least $100,000 each in "soft money" -- a total of $25 million -- to help elect Bush in 1988.

Soft money is used to evade federal campaign laws, which, among other things, limit contributions to a presidential candidate to $1,000 per election.

Administration officials claim that heavy February rains, not political favoritism, made the water available. But taxpayers can be forgiven for wondering.

Boswell officials did not return telephone calls. Leach says he's not sure whether he benefits.

President Bush's policy reversal raises an important question: Given the political potency of Bush's Team 100, to what extent had donors been able to pull strings in the executive branch at the expense of the public?

A six-month investigation revealed that by financing the president's election with six-figure contributions, Team 100 had ensured access and influence in the executive branch while seeking and obtaining:

executive-branch pork barrel hand-outs; vigorous import-export assistance; high-level intervention on regulatory and other matters; appointments to ambassadorships and federal advisory commissions; broad national policies for wealthy Wall Street, oil, real estate, cable tele-vision and other interests. Bush's clean air proposal to Congress, for example, included special provisions promoting alternative automobile fuels important to three Team 100 members: ethanol to benefit Dwayne Andreas's company Archer Daniels Midland (ADM); natural gas to benefit T. Boone Pickens's Mesa company; and reformulated gasoline to benefit Lodwrick Cook's Atlantic Richfield (Arco). While direct quid pro quos are inherently difficult to prove, a clear pattern of favorable treatment of Team 100 members involving questionable actions and policy reversals emerges from government records, corporate reports, interviews, and industry and press reports.

The White House did not respond to a written request for comment.

THE INNER CIRCLE

Who would give $100,000 --- the average American's five-year earnings and 100 times the legal limit -- to help elect the president? "Most who give in that range are giving with some political self-interest," says Thomas McBride, associate special Watergate prosecutor whose campaign finance task force won conviction of several corporate Nixon donors. "They're hoping for an ambassadorial or government appointment, hoping they'll be fondly remembered for White House social events, hoping for access to high decision-making counsels. Or it's even more directly related to some pending matter in the government."

Bush's $100,000 donors are among the nation's wealthiest individuals and represent a number of influential special interests who've also thrown political money around Congress for years. Along with Manhattan real estate mogul Donald Trump, Wall Street take-over artist Henry Kravis, and convicted S&L kingpin Charles Keating, Bush's team includes top executives of major investment firms, oil companies, government contractors and multinational corporations enriched by federal subsidies and protected by import barriers.

Two of Bush's $100,000 donors were invited to join the president on his controversial trip to Japan in January, which directly helped one of them close a business deal. At least four Team 100 donors-- Kenneth Good, Louis Marx, Jackson Stephens and Bill Daniels have done business with or given jobs to the president's sons.

Since 1988, a number of Team 100 donors and the companies they represent have continued to make large soft money contributions to the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the so-called "President's Dinner," a GOP fundraising drive hosted by Bush.

Team 100 members retain expensive, well-connected lobbyists and topflight regulatory lawyers -- including a number of former Bush administration and current campaign officials. Charles Black, a Bush campaign senior adviser, was retained by the Trump Organization and A. James Clark, the nation's third-largest general contractor. James Lake, the Bush campaign's deputy chair, represented Central Valley water users like Boswell and Marguleas.

These $100,000 donors not only give money, but also help raise it for Bush. Texas oilman Bobby Holt was finance chair of Bush-Quayle '92, and Kravis and Florida sugar baron Jose "Pepe" Fanjul were co-chair and vice chair, respectively, of the campaign's finance committee.

Robert Mosbacher, a longtime Bush intimate and chief political money man, masterminded the Team 100 fundraising drive in 1988; he then quit his job as secretary of commerce to chair Bush's reelection campaign.

Team 100 All-Stars—

WHO THEY ARE WHAT THEY GAVE* WHAT HAPPENED

William Lloyd Davis Developer Santa Monica, California $176,540 FAA clears way for $35 million federal grant for Denver air terminal adjacent to industrial park sponsored by Davis's group. J.W. Boswell Agribusinessman, Los Angeles, California $125,000 Bush releases federally subsidized water which supports Boswell's agribusiness concern in California's Central Valley Edward Addison President, Southern Company Services Atlanta, Ga. $105,000 Justice Department kills two-year, $50 million criminal tax probe of Southern, a major electric utility Heinz Prechter, President American Sunroof Corp. Southgate, Mich. $183,100 Joins Bush's trip to Japan; lands lucrative deal for his company Edgar Marston III General Counsel, Southdown Inc. Houston, Texas $125,000 At Southdown's behest, administration imposes first cement tariffs in 26 years. 60 Real Estate Executives $7.9 Million Administration backs real estate tax shelter, weakened wetlands protections. Lodwrick Cook Atlantic Richfield $862,360 Reformulated gas provision in Bush clean air proposal; White House push for Alaska oil drilling T. Boone Pickens Oilman, corporate raider Amarillo, Texas $302,660 Pressed by Pickens, administration inserts natural gas proposal into national energy plan. *Includes individual and corporate contributions to Team 100 & GOP committees.

WATERGATE REDUX

The Bush administration's actions on behalf of $100,000 donors raise striking parallels to the Watergate scandal, which broke 20 years ago this summer. Among other things, fundraisers for CREEP, Nixon's Committee to Re-elect the President, dunned corporate executives whose firms had extensive matters pending before the administration, offering to include them in a "select class" of $100,000 donors.

As the Watergate scandal unfolded, the Nixon administration's decision to raise milk price supports was linked to the milk producers' pledge of funds to Nixon's 1972 campaign. And an internal memo written by International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT) lobbyist Dita Beard suggested that the Nixon Justice Department had dropped three antitrust suits against the finn in return for its $400,000 pledge to help finance the GOP convention in 1972. Several CREEP donors were rewarded with ambassadorships.

George Bush (whom Nixon chose as national party chair in the midst of the Watergate scandal), invited $100,000 donors back into the business of financing presidential elections and influencing the White House. Several Team 100 members in fact were CREEP donors, including insurance executive W. Clement Stone; ADM Chair Dwayne Andreas; Florida developer Alec Courtelis, who took over Team 100 from Robert Mosbacher in 1989; and Mosbacher.

According to Sam Dash, chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee and now a Georgetown University law professor, the reappearance of these names indicates "a lack of respect for what it was that angered the American people in Watergate. And they're back because they're hardball players."

Stone's campaign contributions helped finance Bush's failed Senate campaign in 1970, according to the Washington Post. Bush and Mosbacher, his finance chair even then, received $106,000 from "Operation Townhouse," a secret operation run by two Nixon aides who later pleaded guilty to running an illegal campaign fundraising operation. Four checks of $10,000 each came from Stone.

"It has come to my attention that you sent down a fantastically generous contribution to my campaign," Bush wrote Stone in 1970. "Thanks ever so much .... I really believe we will win and I'm most grateful to you for your help."

Just this [1992] spring, Nixon addressed a gathering of Bush's $100,000 donors at a California hotel. Team 100 gave Nixon a two-minute standing ovation.

Short Circuit

Does Team 100 operate with a different set of rules, or does it just seem that way ?

After more than a decade of political and legal wrangling,Denver area officials were relieved when workers broke ground on the area's new $2.7 billion international airport in 1989. But in 1991, George Doughty, Denver International director of aviation, began hearing ominous rumors. A small, general aviation airfield just five miles away, Front Range, suddenly was courting big cargo carriers like Federal Express and United Parcel Service (UPS). Doughty didn't believe it; big jets couldn't land on Front Range's short, light-duty runways.

"They were planning, and didn't tell us, to amend their airport layout plan to extend and strengthen those runways" with a $35 million federal grant, says Doughty -- violating a regional council of governments agreement and luring away some of the paying traffic Denver International had counted on.

Denver officials soon learned that Front Range's plans are inextricably tied to those of a group of private developers -- including William Lloyd Davis, a California real estate investor who gave $100,000 in soft money to help Bush's 1988 campaign and another $76,540 since then to Bush's national party. The group wanted the small airport upgraded to be the hub of an industrial park project called Centerport they planned to build next door.

Davis's involvement seemed to explain a lot. Doughty says he and other city officials were told by Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorities that Front Range was likely to get the federal grant and they should not stand in the way. Still hoping for additional federal money for their own Denver International, city officials relented, signing an agreement with Front Range officials saying the two airfields would compete for cargo traffic. They also dropped objections to the project's environmental assessment.

"The political influence of the Centerport folks certainly was a factor" in what he believes was an end run by Front Range, Doughty says. "They at least had entree into the [then-transportation] secretary's office and into the White House." Then-Secretary of Transportation (now White House Chief of Staff) Samuel Skinner told him he had met with Centerport representatives, Doughty says.

"There was a much higher level of interest in this by the FAA than the project ever should have gotten," Doughty continues. "The [FAA] associate administrator for airports [Leonard Griggs] was trying to broker an agreement with us."

Griggs did not respond to requests for an interview, but an FAA spokesperson says Griggs did meet with Centerport representatives, as did other FAA personnel.

"The Centerport people have been very involved," says Randy Broderson, administrator of Adams County, which runs Front Range. "I know that they have been meeting with FAA people in Washington and locally and regionally."

An FAA spokesperson denies that Davis's contributions influenced the agency's actions.

Doughty isn't so sure. "Mr. Davis is a major contributor to the Republican Party," he says. "Our point is this is a federal subsidy of a private corporation."

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also raised questions in objecting to the project's environmental assessment. The FAA is supposed to evaluate the need for major airport projects before it can proceed. The only need for this one, said EPA, is to "meet a strategic business plan promoting a privately envisioned market mission" -- meaning Centerport.

Nonetheless, in mid-March the FAA approved the environmental assessment. It was a major victory for the Front Range-Centerport backers: Had the FAA nixed the document, they would have had to go through the much more time-consuming and costly process of preparing a full-blown environmental impact statement.

The approval came two weeks after Davis vice-chaired a $1,000-a-plate fundraiser for Bush-Quayle, which brought in more than $1.25 million.

Though Denver tried to win back the major cargo carriers, Federal Express and UPS committed to the smaller airport in early April.

Many who have fought for Denver International remain angry. "I can't believe the FAA would allow another airport with major jet traffic to operate so close" to Denver lnternanonal, says one city council aide. "With the right kind of influence, I guess you can get a lot of things done."

POWER PLAY

It's still not clear why the Justice Department killed a federal criminal investigation involving one of the nation's largest public utility companies. In February 1988 Georgia Power accountant Gary Gilman paid a secret visit to the IRS. Gilman claimed that Georgia Power and its parent, Southern Company Services, had written off some $50 million in spare parts that were still on the shelf, and may have done so improperly. To keep track of the spare parts, Gilman said, officials devised an "off the books" accounting system and instructed personnel to destroy or take documents home, according to an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta by IRS Special Agent Arthur McGovern.

Gilman went back to work outfitted by the IRS with a hidden recording device. He taped hours of damning conversations with higher-ups and provided IRS agents with company documents and diagrams of offices. "I mean if the IRS comes in... you're dead," one company officer said on tape.

The ensuing investigation turned into one of the largest white-collar criminal cases in Georgia history. But in early 1990, just when things looked bleakest for the utility company, the head of the U.S. Justice Department's tax division, Shirley Peterson, killed the case.

In doing so, Peterson, a Bush political appointee, took the unusual step of overriding her top career lawyers, say sources close to the case who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It was total shock when the answer came down. Disbelief. From a lot of people," says one observer. Some of the potential defendant's lawyers were surprised.

In the absence of any other explanation, one lingering theory is that Southern Co. President Edward Addison's Team 100 membership played some role in the case being killed.

In the two-year investigation, federal agents had raided company offices, seizing records and computer disks. McGovern's affidavit charged that officers of the Southern Co., its subsidiaries and its auditor "schemed and conspired to willfully attempt to evade federal income taxes [and] aided and assisted in the filing of tax returns" known to be false. The Justice Department had authorized the U.S. attorney's office in Atlanta to bring evidence before a grand jury; reportedly more than 500 subpoenas were issued and some 200 witnesses called.

In late 1989 Assistant U.S. Attorney James Fagan told company lawyers he would recommend criminal indictments against six utility employees, as well as Southern Co. and Georgia Power. If tried and convicted, the companies would face up to $200 million in back taxes, penalties and interest.

As Justice Department rules require, Fagan requested permission from the tax division to seek grand jury indictments. Stanley Krysa, chief of the division's criminal enforcement section and a 35-year Justice Department veteran, expressed doubts that the government could prove the highly complex tax allegations, sources say. But Krysa agreed there was evidence of a conspiracy to mislead the IRS and recommended giving Fagan the go-ahead on that part of the case.

Nevertheless, not long after Southern's lawyers pleaded their case at a special meeting with tax division staff lawyers in Washington, criminal allegations were dropped.

In an interview at the Justice Department with Krysa and James Bruton, acting head of the tax division, Krysa noted that only 6 to 10 percent of the criminal cases the division reviews are rejected. However, Bruton, Krysa and Fagan all declined to talk about the Southern case. The Justice Department rejected formal requests for documents pertaining to its review, indicating that their release could interfere with ongoing enforcement proceedings. An attorney representing Southern indicated that a civil case is continuing, but a company official says the firm faces only routine IRS audits.

It's not unusual for executives of the Southern Co., the nation's largest investor-owned electric utility, to communicate with top Bush administration officials. Addison heads a task force of the Business Roundtable, a group of prominent CEOs from 200 of the nation's largest corporations. The following year President Bush joined Addison in a ceremony to present a Roundtable environmental award.

Southern officials "act like people who think they have a lot of power in Washington," says a House of Representatives aide who works on public utility issues.

A lawyer for the company rejects speculation that contributions and politics played a part, arguing, "It's incredible that someone would think [Addison] influenced the case. Shirley Peterson is a fine public servant we should be proud to have in the government."

Southern spokesperson David Mould says the company was innocent all along. Peterson refused to comment on the Southern case, but said in a letter to Common Cause Magazine, "I will, however, state categorically that neither the White House nor any party's political affiliation affected any decision made by me during my time with the Department [of Justice]."

Early this year (1992), Peterson was appointed by Bush and confirmed by the Senate as commissioner of the IRS.

HOTWIRED

Addison also spent time in Washington as a vice chair of the Edison Electric Institute, a leading trade group funded in large part by Southern, that has lobbied the administration to reduce regulation. Addressing Edison's annual convention in San Diego last year via satellite, Bush vowed to help out. "Work with us," Deputy Energy Secretary Henson Moore -- now White House deputy chief of staff-- added. "Our common purpose is great."

The administration has proved it. In an April 25, 1991, letter to Energy Secretary James Watkins and EPA Administrator William Reilly, Edison complained about EPA plans to enforce a provision of the recently adopted Clean Air Act. EPA's draft rules governed which power plant modifications would require installation of new smokestack "scrubbers" to fight sulfur dioxide emissions, which contribute to acid rain. Edison wanted fewer plants covered by the new rule.

A few days later, then-acting Assistant Energy Secretary Linda Stuntz wrote to EPA making the same complaint, saying the draft rules weren't "responsive to the needs of the electric utility industry." Stuntz offered changes requested by Edison. EPA officials balked. "This is mostly garbage," an EPA attorney scribbled in the margin of Stuntz's proposal.

In stepped White House economic adviser Richard Schmalensee, demanding that EPA accept Stuntz's proposal. EPA capitulated and [is currently] expected to offer rules reducing the number of power plants that will have to install scrubbers. Stuntz told the Washington Post that Edison's complaint had had a "significant impact" on her action.

"What's left," charged Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), then chair of the House health and environment subcommittee, "in essence is a rule written by polluters to benefit polluters."

TRUST

Not long after his promotion in 1991 to U.S. attorney general, William Barr announced a Justice Department plan to prosecute, under U.S. antitrust laws, companies in Japan's "keiretsu" system of interlocking firms, buyers and suppliers. The action was aimed at forcing the so-called cartels to let American firms in. Barr's plan, denounced as "loopy and dangerous" by the Washington Post, seemed to come from nowhere. But insiders knew it came from T. Boone Pickens, corporate raider, oil-man and $100,000 Bush donor. "Before Boone came along nobody knew a keiretsu from a kimono," says a Pickens spokesperson.

Since Pickens's $100,000 contribution to help Bush in 1988, he and his Mesa companies have given another $202,660 in soft money to the RNC and the President's Dinner fund. In late 1991 Bush showed up at Pickens's home for a Texas GOP fundraiser that netted more than $600,000.

In mid-1990 Pickens' met privately with high-level Justice Department officials. He was angry because, despite being the largest single stockholder of the Japanese auto parts firm Koito Manufacturing, he was denied a seat on its board of directors. Toyota, the second largest shareholder, had three seats.

"If the Japanese want to operate in this country, they should do so only in complete compliance with all of our laws," Pickens said at the time. "If they refuse, then they should face the same civil and criminal penalties as other antitrust violators."

Barr's action came too late for Pickens -- in 1991 he pulled out of Koito. Still, he praised Barr, calling his initiative "a breath of fresh air."

CHARGE IT

Paul Hebner, an executive vice president (since retired) Of Occidental Petroleum, gave $100,000 to Team 100 in 1988-- the same year the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Hearings and Appeals announced it would hold Occidental liable for a whopping $710 million in fines and interest for alleged violations of federal oil price controls. But four years have passed, and one of the largest, longest-running and most controversial oil overcharge cases in DOE history remains unresolved. The company has so far avoided paying penalties to the U.S. Treasury, 14 state governments and millions of oil customers -- although Oxy and Hebner have managed to pump another $234,780 in soft money into the RNC and the President's Dinner fund.

In late 1988 Occidental appealed the $710 million charge -- and lost. But in February 1989 DOE's Economic Regulatory Administration (ERA) announced a proposed settlement with Oxy of just $150 million, or 21 cents on the dollar, to be paid over an eight-year period. Even with interest, its payments would total only $205 million.

The affected states vigorously protested the reduced fine. And a 1990 General Accounting Office (GAO) investigation identified several irregularities in ERA's handling of the case. Among other things, ERA's lead attorney on the case was excluded from key negotiating sessions with the company.

In May 1991, responding in part to "the public's widespread perception that the settlement terms are unreasonable," ERA formally withdrew the settlement offer. Occidental and the Energy Department could not agree on a new principal amount for the fine, so the matter was back in litigation. The company could appeal the matter all the way to the Supreme Court. Final resolution of the case "could be very far in the future," says an official familiar with the case. Occidental officials did not return phone calls.

FARMED OUT

Farmworkers' rights advocates blame sugar baron Jose "Pepe" Fanjul's personal ties to the Bush administration for the Labor Department's failure to crack down on his company's abuse of Caribbean workers. The plight of the workers, brought to the United States for the backbreaking work of cutting cane, was the subject of a congressional report. The Fanjuls' Ho-Sun company dominates the Florida sugar industry, with 160,000 acres and three processing mills, plus another 240,000 acres in the Dominican Republic. Jose Fanjul splits his time between a 26-room mansion in Palm Beach and a 7,000-acre estate in the Dominican Republic.

The Fanjul family is enriched by a complicated arrangement of quotas and government price supports that restricts sugar imports and props up domestic sugar prices. U.S. sugar programs cost U.S. consumers about $3 billion a year, while reportedly providing the Fanjuls some $50 million.

Team 100 member Fanjul and his company have given $200,000 in soft money to help elect Bush and to the RNC since then. Fanjul was a Bush fundraiser in 1988 and is a finance committee vice chair for the '92 Bush-Quayle campaign. He also is close to Robert and Georgette Mosbacher; in 1989 they spent their first Bush administration Christmas at the Fanjuls' resort in the Dominican Republic. Upon taking the helm at the Commerce Department, Mosbacher hired Wayne Berman, a Fanjul lobbyist, as his chief legal adviser.

Van Boyette, Fanjul's current lobbyist, sees nothing wrong with the family's political generosity. "It's not a quid pro quo," he says. "[The campaign money] comes from the bottom of their hearts."

According to congressional investigators, the Labor Department determined that the Fanjuls' Okeelanta sugar mill had violated minimum wage and work rules in 1988 and 1989 and levied a $267,000 fine. But more than a year passed without the Labor Department collecting the fine. Meanwhile, it allowed Okeelanta to import workers for the 1990 season "without requiring any proof of discontinuation of the unlawful employment practices found in the prior year," a congressional report notes -- and even though the fine hadn't been paid.

Company lawyers are negotiating with the Labor Department to reduce the fine. A reduction seems likely; after fining Okeelanta $2.5 million for 1987 and 1988 violations, the department settled for 12 cents on the dollar.

Labor Department officials deny the Fanjuls influenced their handling of the Okeelanta cases. Okeelanta denies charges that the company mistreated its workers or violated labor rules, and company spokesperson Joseph Klock says Fanjul's political contributions actually make Labor officials more will-ing to scrutinize his client.

But the way Mike Hancock, executive director of the Farmworkers Justice League in Washington, sees it, the Fanjuls' political contributions and connections have helped to make the Bush administration "solicitous" toward Okeelanta in the labor case.

"There's no smoking gun, but there's clearly indications" of inordinate influence, Hancock says.

Welfare for Fat Cats

How Team 100 members get and protect government giveaways.

One of President Bush's key reelection campaign strategies was to attack Congress for bringing home the bacon. "Those who reject these pork barrel projects will stand with me and the American taxpayer," Bush said in March. "Those who support them will have to explain in November why the public interest has been denied." Bush's hit list of pork barrel projects did not include one of USDA's most controversial handouts: the Market Promotion Program, which gives U.S. companies money to buy billboard space and television advertising touting their brand-name products overseas.

The program distributes some $200 million a year -- $1 billion since 1986 to U.S. food, tobacco and liquor producers, including Team 100 members firms.

A major share of USDA's $8.9 million grant to promote Kentucky bourbon overseas since 1990 went to Brown-Forman distilleries, headed by Team 100 member W.L. Lyons Brown. The money pays for advertisements for Jack Daniel's whiskey and Early Times bourbon. "Brown-Forman's overseas business enjoyed another year of record volume," Brown wrote company shareholders in 1991. He and his firm have given a total of $305,000 in soft money to elect Bush, to the RNC and to the President's Dinner fund.

The Dole Food Co., the worldwide fruit concern chaired by Team 100 member David Murdock, was among the highest recipients of USDA export promotion money in 1991, reportedly receiving more than $4 million. Murdock and his firm have given a total of $335,000 to elect Bush and to the RNC and the President's dinner.

"It's a huge sieve in the agriculture budget that provides no useful service except as a form of corporate welfare for companies that don't need [it]," says Bob McCarson, a spokesperson for Rep. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).

"WATER IS LIKE DEMOCRACY"

When Bush announced the emergency federal water allocation for California farmers in March, it wasn't the first time he had taken care of James Boswell's business interests. In 1989, in the face of a 960-acre cap on the size of farms eligible for federal low-cost water, the J.G. Boswell company split its 23,000-acre farm into parcels smaller than 960 acres and sold them at bargain prices to the Westhaven Trust, which was set up in the name of 326 employees.

Boswell's ploy worked: The Interior Department ruled that Westhaven Trust would be eligible for subsidized federal water. Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan later conceded Boswell's arrangement was counter to the spirit of the water program but has let it stand.

As a result, Boswell's Westhaven Trust receives federal water at $13 per acre-foot, less than one-third the price charged to large farms, at a cost to the government of about $2 million a year, according to the GAO. And while Boswell's firm technically doesn't own the farm, it does continue to live off the land: The Westhaven Trust reportedly pays the firm more than $1 million a year to manage the farms and, according to a congressional aide, Boswell still owns the ranch's railroad line, cotton mill, business offices and subsurface mineral rights.

Helped by the low-cost federal water, Boswell's California operation -- not some muddy southern plantation -- is the nation's top cotton producer. "Water rights are like democracy," J.G. Boswell once said. "Once you have them you spend a lifetime defending them."

The Bush administration rejected calls from environmental groups and members of Congress to overhaul the water program. While city dwellers and wildlife suffer water shortages, some 80 percent of the federal supply goes to growers, many of whom have 40-year leases and raise federally subsidized produce. A reform measure sponsored by then-Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) was blocked in committee thanks to an effort led by yet another Bush $100,000 donor -- California Republican Sen. John Seymour.

WHITE LIGHTNING

Early in his tenure Bush invited officers of a corn growers' group to the White House to talk about ethanol, a corn-distilled alcohol that's mixed with gasoline to make gasohol. Bush later drove an ethanol-powered car around a Nebraska test track. "President Bush has repeatedly made clear his support for the development of ethanol," says Edith Munro, spokesperson for the Corn Refiners Association. The chief beneficiary of Bush's enthusiasm for ethanol? ADM, which has cornered some 70 percent of the nation's ethanol market. In fact, about 10 percent of its profits come from making ethanol out of corn. At the helm is globetrotting $100,000 Bush donor Dwayne Andreas.

Ethanol continues to fuel controversy -- critics say it wouldn't be a gasoline alternative if not for Andreas's clout with the White House and Congress. Without a federal tax exemption of about 54 cents a gallon -- almost $5 billion during the 1980s -- gasohol would be a lot more expensive than regular gasoline; it takes as much energy to produce as it gives off and some question whether it really curbs air pollution.

Nevertheless, Bush recently signed legislation extending the ethanol subsidy to the year 2000 at an estimated cost to taxpayers of $3.43 billion. The Treasury Department has ruled that the subsidy could also fund the ethanol derivative ETBE at a projected additional cost of $192 million. Ethanol also benefits from federal price supports for corn and sugar.

With Bush's support, the Clean Air Act of 1990 will require smoggy cities to offer ethanol-blend gasoline. The bill is expected to boost the ethanol market by 50 percent; one farm analyst estimates it could add 22 cents to ADM's per-share earnings.

Republican oil-state senators, usually Bush allies, are less enthusiastic about ethanol subsidies. "I do not have anything against ADM, but that is where most of the benefits are going to go," Oklahoma Sen. Don Nickles said.

EPA recently raised ADM hackles with a new regulation that excludes certain ethanol-blend gasolines from the Clean Air Act's reformulated gasoline program, saying that they emit too many smog-producing volatile compounds. But under pressure from the ADM-dominated Renewable Fuels Association, EPA agreed to a new round of industry comments.

ADM did not respond to requests for comment. But Andreas's history of political generosity, Capitol Hill connections and clout is a common theme in press accounts.

Andreas became a focal point in the Watergate scandal when his $25,000 check to the 1972 Nixon campaign was discovered in the bank account of Watergate burglar Bernard Barker, helping to link the break-in to the White House. Andreas was indicted but later acquitted in connection with his $150,000 contribution to Democrat Hubert Humphrey's 1972 presidential campaign. Andreas and ADM have given a total of $652,000 in soft money to elect Bush and to GOP committees since.

Andreas told the New York Times Magazine that he never lobbies Bush on ethanol during his periodic White House visits. But as White House counsel C. Boyden Gray told the Times, Andreas suggested at a 1988 dinner that one way for candidate Bush to win votes was to tout the environmental benefits of ethanol.

GAS ATTACK

In December 1990, as U.S. military forces massed on the Iraqi border, T. Boone Pickens, the Texas oilman and Team 100 donor, called on the administration to reduce imported oil's "stranglehold" on the U.S. economy by increasing the country's reliance on natural gas. Pickens, chair and CEO of Mesa Inc., a natural gas producer, even had a plan: The government should convert 500,000 of its vehicles to compressed natural gas, and it should stop buying gasoline-powered vehicles after 1991. Bush's 1989 clean air proposal called for natural gas-powered cars, but his national energy strategy, released three months after Pickens's speech, was more specific. It called for a substantial phase-in -- 90 percent of new purchases by the year 2000 -- of natural-gas and other alternative-fuel vehicles in business-owned fleets.

On March 6, one month after Mesa made a $100,000 contribution to the RNC, Bush announced new regulations designed to promote the use of natural gas-powered vehicles.

Trading Favors

Blocking imports, pushing exports: whatever works best for Team 100.

President Bush and the GOP have preached the free-trade gospel for years. "It is the politicians and special interests who use protectionism to cover up their failures and enrich themselves at the expense of the country as a whole," the 1988 Republican platform proclaimed. But free trade and protectionism are flexible concepts. The Bush administration has shown that it can bend over backward to protect a certain industry or Team 100 contributor -- from free market realities.

Take the domestic cement industry, which since 1960 has repeatedly attempted to block imports from Mexico, Japan, Venezuela and other nations. Since 1975, five straight petitions had been rejected, including two during the Reagan administration.

All that abruptly changed when George Bush came to office. His administration has ruled favorably on all three anti-dumping petitions filed by the domestics. Leading the charge was the nation's third-biggest cement maker, Southdown Inc. of Houston, whose corporate counsel is Bush $100,000 donor Edgar Marston III.

"We were pleasantly surprised" by the Bush administration's help, says John Bloom, Southdown's director of corporate planning.

On September 26, 1989, eight months into the Bush administration, a Southdown-led group of U.S. cement manufacturers asked for protection from Mexican imports.

Three days later, Southdown gave the Republican National Committee $25,000.

Within two months, Robert Mosbacher's Commerce Department decided that imports were hurting the domestic manufacturers. The following April, the International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that Mexican cement was being "dumped"--sold at less than fair value -- even though it often cost more than domestic cement.

One success led to another, and another. By early 1992, responding to petitions spearheaded by Southdown, the Bush administration had virtually driven out cement imports from Mexico, Japan and Venezuela, clearing the way for domestic producers to raise prices.

Thus Southdown could tell stockholders last year that it was possible "to achieve a price increase despite the precipitous drop in cement consumption."

Marston denies there is any connection between the contribution and his company's plea for help. "That money was given because Dukakis was running for president," Marston says.

Ironically, Southdown had made millions of dollars importing Mexican cement in a joint venture with Cemex, the largest Mexican producer. Southdown sold out to Cemex in 1989. Less than three weeks later Southdown's CEO signed the document asking the administration to investigate Cemex and other Mexican producers.

As one cement industry economist points out, "This is a very concentrated industry. If you can kill off your major competitor, you can keep prices up."

Higher prices were critical to Southdown, which had increased its corporate debt five-fold buying up competitors in the 1980s. Now the construction industry was collapsing.

Two separate bureaucracies, the Commerce Department and ITC, handle anti-dumping cases. The Commerce Department found that Mexican cement was being dumped. At the ITC, the case took three odd turns.

First, anti-dumping petitions must be supported by manufacturers of "all or almost all" of the product in a region. But Southdown and its allies produced just 62 percent of cement in the southern states.

Second, Southdown presented unsubstantiated statistics on Japanese cement prices, and the ITC used them to bolster the case against Mexico.

Third, the commissioners split over how to calculate domestic production, a key element in assessing any economic damage. One commissioner concluded that the domestic industry had already bottomed out and Mexican cement was not suppressing prices. But two other commissioners found material injury. Southdown won.

Mexican imports dropped about 60 percent and disappeared from some markets. Domestic prices went up.

The Mexican government called for bilateral negotiations, which failed. It has appealed to the U.S. Court of International Trade and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in Geneva, arguing that no government has ever before mixed proven and unsubstantiated data in a multinational dumping case.

Despite all the help, Southdown still had problems in Florida, which depends on both imported and domestic cement. Venezuelan cement had replaced the Mexican imports, although imports overall weren't gaining market share. In May 1991 Southdown and other domestics filed an anti-dumping petition charging that the Venezuelan government subsidized the imports; importers said the subsidies had stopped months earlier.

The petition also brought cries from independent U.S. cement companies that used imported cement.

"I would ask of you to please consider what the real motives are behind this suit," Roger Charles of Charles RediMix Inc. wrote to Mosbacher. "Might there be an underlying motive of total control of the cement market? Should these producers gain this control, they could conceivably... force the independents to be at their mercy, and mercy does not appear to be one of their strong characteristics."

The ITC and the Commerce Department discovered that Venezuelan cement usually cost more than the domestic product, but ruled that it was being dumped anyway. Practically speaking, the Venezuelans lost.

TOBACCO DIPLOMACY

Tobacco's links to cancer spur many nations to restrict cigarette sales and advertising. But the Bush administration has pulled out the stops to spread U.S. tobacco products abroad, to the benefit of Team 100. American tobacco firms "play our free trade laws and export policies like a Stradivarius violin," said James Mason, a top official of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in a 1990 speech. Tobacco interests represented on Team 100 have contributed a total of nearly $1.8 million in soft money to help elect Bush, to the RNC and to the President's Dinner fund.

KKR and RJR Nabisco, which it controls, lead the pack. Former RJR Nabisco CEO F. Ross Johnson, company attorney W.G. Champion Mitchell III, and KKR principals Henry Kravis and George Roberts each gave $100,000 to help elect Bush in 1988. Since then, RJR Nabisco has given $438,930 in soft money, Roberts $50,000, and Kravis $25,000 to the RNC. KKR executives Robert MacDonnell and Paul Raether also gave $125,000 and $130,000.

Louis Bantle, chair of the Greenwich, Conn.-based U.S. Tobacco Co., contributed $100,000 to help Bush in 1988. Since then, his firm has given another $204,760 to the RNC.

While not a member of Team 100, Philip Morris has given more than $224,000 in soft money to the RNC since 1988; the industry-funded Tobacco Institute has contributed $77,500.

Despite shrinking sales in the U.S., the tobacco companies are healthy thanks in large part to exports, which reached $1.5 billion in 1991. The Commerce Department helped Philip Morris and RJR negotiate a deal to export 34 billion cigarettes to the Soviet Union in 1991, a transaction reportedly worth some $50 million to Philip Morris and $40 million to RJR Nabisco.

In 1989 U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Carla Hills joined R.J. Reynolds, Philip Morris and Brown & Williamson in a fight to overturn import and advertising restrictions in Thailand. They won most of their case before GATT in October 1990. Now the administration is pressuring Taiwan to drop its proposed sterner warning labels and bans on cigarette advertising and smokeless tobacco.

HHS finds itself caught in the conflict between health and tobacco. Secretary Louis Sullivan and Surgeon General Antonia Novello criticize the industry for targeting children and minorities, but HHS has been powerless to affect export policies.

"When push comes to shove," an industry critic says of HHS, "they're going to back off."

In most cases the entire industry has benefited. But according to State Department cables, diplomatic correspondence and interviews, the Bush administration has taken extraordinary action to help a single Team 100 member's firm, U.S. Tobacco.

U.S. Tobacco makes Skoal and Copenhagen oral snuff, shredded tobacco that health experts say causes an excruciating form of mouth cancer. The company is pushing to build its overseas sales.

In 1989, shortly after his country banned oral snuff, Australian Attorney General Michael Duffy tried to schedule a meeting at the State Department in Washington. To Duffy's surprise, his appointment with Assistant Secretary of State Richard McCormack was put off several times. When the meeting finally began, Duffy found out why: U.S. Tobacco executives wanted to attend.

Duffy felt ambushed, an Australian attache says, adding, "The process was somewhat quaint, to say the least."

Nicholas Buoniconti, the former football star and then president of U.S. Tobacco, placed tins of tobacco on the table and complained about Australia's oral snuff ban for 10 minutes. Duffy politely disagreed; the executives said thanks and departed.

"Clearly the money contributed by U.S. Tobacco resulted in the administration giving undue attention to a product that causes cancer and has no real market overseas," in the view of Greg Connolly, chair of a World Health Organization study group that helped five nations ban products made by U.S. Tobacco. A company official denied the link.

Meanwhile the Commerce Department and the USTR's office were attacking a British proposal to ban oral snuff. Britain cited a 1986 U.S. surgeon general's report on its dangers. A U.S. diplomat shot back, "If the U.K. adopts this ban, it could become a contentious bilateral issue."

The ban was adopted. A month later Secretary of State James Baker raised the issue with the British foreign minister. Mosbacher mentioned it in London. McCormack and Deputy USTR Linn Williams spoke to British attaches. Officials of the Commerce and Agriculture departments also pushed the issue, as did North Carolina's senators, Republican Jesse Helms and Democrat Terry Sanford.

The British government stood fast. U.S. Tobacco went to British court twice and got the ban rejected on procedural grounds. After each ruling, U.S. Ambassador Henry Catto (a Bush fundraiser) urged the British not to appeal. U.S. Tobacco offered concessions, including a vow not to market Copenhagen to children, Catto noted in a 1991 letter to the British government. He added: "We think [this] offer ... would allow us to put this issue, which has caused considerable consternation and high-level political concern, behind us."

U.S. Tobacco ultimately lost that battle to a European Community continent-wide ban on smokeless tobacco. Still, Bantle's generosity continues. In June 1991, U.S. Tobacco supplied $83,174 worth of chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon in glasses inscribed with the company logo to the 1991 President's Dinner.

When the master of ceremonies announced that Bantle had pledged a $100,000 soft money contribution, according to UPI reporter Tom Ferraro, the tobacco magnate proudly stood as the crowd cheered.

[President] Bush's Corporate Cabinet

To many observers, President Bush's trade crusade to Japan was a public relations disaster. But for Heinz Prechter, it was a trip to bountiful. Prechter, a $100,000 Bush donor and one of the 21 top executives who joined Bush's buy-American mission in January, is owner and chair of ASC Inc. of Southgate, Mich., an automobile customizing company that pulls in $500 million a year. If you see a new Chevy Cavalier or Toyota Celica with a convertible top, you're looking at Prechter's handiwork.

While his traveling companions were being criticized for their seven-figure salaries, Prechter was sealing a lucrative deal to supply sunroofs for Honda's American-made cars, wresting the job from Japanese firms. The Honda deal meant as much extra business for ASC Inc., which Prechter owns outright.

Within three weeks of the trip Prechter contributed a total of $60,000 in soft money to the Republican party. It was Prechter who helped persuade Bush to take the CEOs along in the first place. "We hope that you...regularly consider including representatives from U.S. firms when you and other high-level U.S. government officials travel abroad," Prechter wrote to Bush five months before the Japan trip.

Prechter wasn't invited on the trip because he gave Bush $100,000, a company officer assures; Prechter got to go because Bush appointed him chair of the President's Export Council, a quasi-official panel that advises the White House on trade matters. In fact, a striking number of Export Council members appointed by President Bush were from Team 100, including:

Donald Bollinger, CEO of Bollinger Machine Shop & Shipyard of Lockport, La.; Developer Max Fisher, founding chair of the massive Detroit Renaissance water-front project; Robert W. Johnson IV, a Manhattan investor; Corporate takeover artist Henry Kravis of the Wall Street firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.; and Gerald Parsky, investor and corporate lawyer with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Los Angeles's largest firm.

All in all, Export Council members contributed a total of at least $600,000 to help elect Bush in 1988. According to Commerce Department documents, members were recommended to then-Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher by the late Lee Atwater, chair of the 1988 Bush campaign. Also making recommendations were Florida developer Alec Courtelis, a $100,000 donor who assumed Team 100 fundraising duties from Mosbacher in 1989, and Lawrence Bathgate, a $100,000 donor who then chaired the RNC's finance committee. Prechter wasn't the only Team 100 member on the council with business interests involving trade. Kravis's firm controls RJR Nabisco, which the administration helped crack overseas cigarette markets. Parsky's law firm represents the National Knitwear and Sportswear Association, which filed an anti-dumping petition with the Commerce Department in 1989 and won. Bollinger's shipyard has an interest in maintaining the stiff tariff on U.S. ship repairs done overseas.

Export Council members clearly were not chosen for their trade expertise. "These are busy people -- they don't pretend to be the experts," says the one private sector panelist who is an expert, John Yochelson, vice president of international business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

The Export Council is a high-profile version of the hundreds of private-citizen advisory commissions attached to federal government agencies. Most of these panels toil in obscurity, and panelists typically are industry specialists who meet occasionally and issue densely worded reports.

But the number of Team 100 members named to advisory committees-- a dozen to Commerce and U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) panels alone- suggests that membership has become one way to say thanks. And it had its privileges. Panelists on high-profile commissions enjoy unusual access to the cabinet officials they advise. Prechter, for example, has met with'Mosbacher "probably over 100 times," ASC spokesperson Kyle Chura says.

The trade panels [were] a "integral to policy making at Commerce and USTR," says Clare Soponis, who direct[ed] the advisory commission program at the Commerce Department. "It's a good tool for government to get proper advice on esoteric things."

Many commissions meet behind closed doors, are privy to inside information and help shape policies that could wind up benefiting their companies. Commerce's Auto Parts Advisory Committee -- on which Prechter also serves -- urged President Bush to press the Japanese to buy more U.S. auto components, which Bush did successfully. Advisory commission members are exempt from the criminal statute that bars U.S. government employees from making decisions on matters in which they have a direct financial interest. Members also receive[d] government security clearances.

Three $100,000 donors advise[d] U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills through the high-level Advisory Committee for Trade and Policy Negotiations: Brown-Forman CEO W.L. Lyons Brown, Dallas developer Trammell Crow and Goodyear Chair Stan Gault. Team 100 donors Joseph Fogg of the investment firm Morgan Stanley, Coastal Corp. CEO James Paul, former Ambassador John Whitehead and investor Parker Montgomery serve on other trade panels.

Two of Bush's $100,000 donors served on yet another sensitive trade panel at the same time Mosbacher and Hills were fighting their companies' trade battles. Archer Daniels Midland Chair Dwayne Andreas stood to gain when the USTR fought European soybean subsidies in 1990; Louis Bantie, CEO of the U.S. Tobacco Co., got help in battling tobacco restrictions overseas. Other $100,000 donors on this panel include[d] Craig Berkman, CEO of Synektron Corp., and Phillips Petroleum Chair C.J. Silas.

Bruce Clemens, vice president and general counsel of Prechter's ASC Inc., says his boss's 1990 appointment to the Export Council had nothing to do with Prechter's political generosity.

"Boy, I hope [people] don't think that," he says. "Heinz has always been an international marketplace thinker. He's a real vocal person about the whole thing and always has been."

But company spokesperson Kyle Chura does allow that Prechter's position benefits the company. "It is a bit self-serving," he says.

Landed Gentry

A quarter of Team 100 hails from the real estate industry. When they talk, Bush listens

In 1986 Ronald Reagan and Congress abolished the "passive loss" tax shelter for real estate investments as part of the tax reform package that lowered income tax rates for the wealthy. But in his January State of the Union address, President Bush called on Congress to bring it back -- at least for big real estate developers. Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady and Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan had cautioned against reviving the break in congressional testimony a month earlier, but apparently they were no match for Team 100.

Some 60 individuals involved in real estate are on Team 100. All told, they have given $7.9 million to the Bush bid in '88 and to the RNC since.

Before it was abolished, the passive loss break helped spur the speculative commercial overbuilding of the 1980s, which in turn helped sink the nation's S&Ls. The shelter provided a classic writeoff: New properties actually could make money by losing money.

The real estate industry never got used to tax reform. The elimination of the write-off "was just an absolute catastrophe for the country, for the real estate industry," Team 100 member Donald Trump told Congress last fall. "It has to be brought back It has to be taken care of."

Last December representatives of a dozen real estate trade groups got a crucial meeting with Bush, where they pleaded for its restoration. Among those present was Robert Lamon, chair of the National Realty Committee.

The Realty Committee speaks for major developers and investors. Several of Bush's $100,000 donors or officers of their companies are on its board of directors. Larson is a top executive of the Taubman Companies of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., a shopping mall developer headed by Team 100 donor Alfred Taubman. Other Team 100 members represented on the committee's board include:

• Donald Bren, chair of the Irvine Co. of Newport Beach, Calif., who is on Forbes magazine's list of the 400 richest people in America;

• Trammell Crow, chair of the Tram-mell Crow Co. of Dallas, Texas, the nation's No. 1 developer;

• Peter Bedford, president of Bedford Properties of Lafayette, Calif.; and

• A. James Clark, chair of Clark Construction of Bethesda, Md., another Forbes 400 luminary and one of the largest builders in the D.C. area.

Since the 1988 election, Bren's Irvine Co., whose holdings include a chunk of coastal California four times the size of Manhattan, has given another $205,100 in soft money to the RNC. In February Bren co-chaired a $1,000-a-plate dinner in Los Angeles that raised more than $1.25 million for Bush-Quayle '92. Bren and Irvine Co. officials declined to comment. Bush heeded the industry's call. His passive loss tax break for developers cost taxpayers nearly $2.5 billion over five years, the Treasury Department estimates.

A proposal in Congress supported by the National Association of Realtors, which operates the nation's largest PAC, would have provided the tax break to realtors as well. In contrast, "Bush's plan would restore passive loss write-offs for big real estate developers only," notes Citizens for Tax Justice, a Washington-based policy group.

While Bush vetoed (for other reasons) a tax bill with a modified version of his proposal, his stance has set the stage for further action.

REGULATOR END-RUN

Team 100 members have dozens of ways of making their interests known to the White House, but one of the most direct may be through Vice President Dan Quayle's Council on Competitiveness. The panel has weighed in on issues ranging from product liability to air pollution and repeatedly gutted regulations that resulted from months or years of work by federal agencies. Quayle's council "has usurped power, holds secret meetings with industry groups and violates administrative procedures on public hearings and public access to information on decision-making," Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) charged in an interview with the Washington Post.

The council claims exemption from the Freedom of Information Act and it stonewalls the press, watchdog groups and Congress. Quayle meanwhile solicits industry comments on regulatory matters and holds closed-door meetings around the country with business executives who are big GOP donors.

For some Team 100 donors from the real estate and oil and gas industries, one of the hottest issues is the definition of wetlands, which Ouayle's panel has taken great interest in.

Wetlands are ecologically delicate areas that filter out groundwater contaminants, help control floods, and harbor birds and other wildlife. Wetlands use, on private as well as public land, is federally regulated.

The attack on wetlands dates back to wetlands definitions issued by the government in 1989. Industry charged that they would needlessly restrict development and other uses in many areas.

Last summer, over the objections of EPA Administrator William Reilly, an administration working group heavily guided by the council proposed weaker definitions. This time it was environmentalists -- and environmental scientists, engineers and others who work in the field --who hit the roof.

The administration, which has received 70,000 letters on the proposed redefinitions, must now decide whether to finalize them, start over or kick the whole matter over to the National Academy of Sciences, as some have suggested. "It's very political stuff," says one EPA staffer.

In the meantime, the Quayle Council has solicited the advice of at least one pro-industry group with close Team 100 ties: the National Wetlands Coalition.

A creation of the lobbying firm Van Ness, Feldman & Curtis, the coalition includes Phillips Petroleum, whose chair C.J. Silas gave $100,000 in 1988 and which has given $115,000 in corporate funds to the RNC and the President's Dinner fund since then; the International Council of Shopping Centers, which includes Team 100 donors Al Taubman and Edward DeBarrolo; and the Koll Co., headed by California developer Donald Koll, another Team 100 donor. All told, Team 100 members in the coalition and their companies have given more than $1.9 million in soft money to Bush and the GOP.

A Van Ness partner, Robert Szabo, has met with the head of the White House Domestic Policy Council's wetlands task force, and in January he met with two Competitiveness Council staffers to discuss the wetlands issue.

New definitions could make an enormous difference to the coalition's members and others in real estate. In Orange County, the Koll Co. has agreed to preserve about 1,000 acres in a coastal area the company is developing called the Bolsa Chica. The administration's proposals could mean a dramatic turnaround: "If the redefinition takes hold, up to 70 percent [of the 1,000 acres] will fall out of federal protection," says Adrianne Morrison, ex-ecutive director of the Amigos de Bolsa Chica, a wetlands preservation group.

Lucy Dunn, a senior vice president with Koll, says the company will honor the agreement but adds that other Koll projects could be affected by the redefinitions. "I'm very supportive of the redefinitions," she says. "Eco-terrorists across the nation will say that everything's a wetland, so don't touch it."

In fact, according to EPA, at least 75 percent of California's seasonal wetlands -- most of the wetlands in the state -- will no longer be protected if the Bush proposal stands.

Also imperiled is a tiny songbird, the California gnatcatcher, which lives in the same Orange County habitat as some of Bush's richest donors.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has proposed listing the gnatcatcher as an endangered species, which could block numerous development plans. Leading the opposition: the Building Industry Association of Southern California (BIA), whose Orange County chapter, includes companies headed by Team 100 donors Lyon, Bren, Kathryn Thompson and James Baldwin. In a recent flyer, the BIA proclaimed itself "an awesome force."

Some BIA members, including Bren and Baldwin, have formed the Coalition for Habitat Conservation to block gnatcatcher listing; they are pushing an alternative program that environmentalists say wouldn't do the job.

But the Bush administration seems receptive. In a September 1991 press release announcing the proposed listing of the gnatcatcher, FWS praised the alternative program and even Bren's Irvine Co. by name.

In December FWS Director John Turner "dropped by" a California fundraiser for the alternative program, according to Laer Pearce, a public relations consultant who both heads the coalition and speaks for BIA.

And in early March, Turner's deputy Richard Smith met with four real estate industry lobbyists on the gnatcatcher question, including Hank Hankla, whose clients include both the BIA and the coalition, and William Ferguson Jr., who represents the Irvine Co.

Pearce makes no apologies for taking his clients' fight to the highest levels. "We feel that if we leave it to [FWS] staff, none of our questions will be satisfactorily addressed," he says. "We have to cover those [political] bases."

The gnatcatcher's fate is expected to be decided by September.

Lets Be Friends

From Wall Street to the oilfields, Bush want[ed] what his donors want[ed].

Just before his '89 inauguration, George Bush made reference to the political good fortune of his friends in the oil business. "They got a president of the United States that came out of the oil and gas industry, that knows it and knows it well." Not surprisingly, 20 oil interests are represented on Team 100, including some of the biggest in the business. Altogether they have given more than $3.8 million to Bush's '88 election bid and to GOP national committees since then.

But one company stands head and shoulders above the rest. Atlantic Richfield (Arco) tops its competitors in the amount of soft money it has contributed to the team and in its impact on key policy proposals. While some in the industry -- particularly smaller, independent companies -- might complain about specific administration proposals, Arco has repeatedly benefited.

Thanks to Lodwrick Cook, chair of Arco, the company's relationship with the White House is strong and well-financed. In 1988 Cook and company president and CEO Robert Wycoff each contributed $100,000 to Team 100; since then the company has donated $462,360 in soft money to the RNC- plus $200,000 to the President's Dinner fund. All in all, Arco has contributed $862,360 in soft money to the '88 Bush effort and GOP national committees. For years Cook has been a GOP stalwart: He chairs the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation; he's a Bush and Reagan golfing partner; and in August, he will host the "GOP Gala Luncheon" at the party's national convention.

Arco spokesperson Al Greenstein acknowledges that Cook's "access is related to the fact that he is a supporter of President Bush."

FILL 'ER UP

Whatever the explanation, the company's impact on the policy process seems extraordinary. Take the issue of clean air. A funny thing happened on Bush's way to announcing his clean air plan in 1989. According to spokesperson Greenstein, Cook "talked to the president [and] told him how excited he was" that Arco had successfully tested a new gasoline formula.

Thus began a sequence of events that left government fuel experts stunned and disillusioned and found other oil companies playing catchup. What was to have been a major, environmentally sensitive push from the White House for truly alternative that is, non-oil based -- fuels, was changed in a matter of days to protect Arco's interests.

Government and industry officials say it happened like this: Days before Bush unveiled his clean air plan, executives from Arco and other major oil concerns met with the president. "The White House was pretty receptive to the oil industry coming forward [and] said 'We'll politically support you,'" a government official close to the talks recalls.

Bush's guests were concerned that his clean air plan would threaten the $100 billion-a-year gasoline business and exerted "a lot of pressure" on Bush, the official says.

White House advisers were promoting methanol, a natural gas derivative and personal favorite of White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray. After years of research, EPA scientists had concluded that methanol was the auto fuel of the future.

"The oil industry thought it was facing a very large methanol mandate," says Doffs Dewton, director of government relations at the National Petroleum Refiners Association. "That's when it invented reformulated gasoline."

Unlike methanol, which is made from natural gas, or ethanol, produced from corn or sugar cane, reformulated gasoline is nothing more than the traditional oil-based fuel modified to reduce polluting emissions. In fact, it uses even more oil than regular gasoline. And it's still in the experimental stage.

"Reformulated gasoline was not even a concept when the [clean air] debate started," recalls Jeff Alson, an official at EPA's vehicle emissions lab in Ann Arbor and co-author of Bush's original, methanol-based alternative fuels proposal.

Nevertheless, at a Camp David session with top advisers the weekend before Bush announced his clean air proposal, reformulated gasoline made its way into the president's plan.

The oil company that would benefit most? Arco. Pushed by tough anti-pollution standards in its native California, Arco had already begun modifying its refineries and was producing a cleaner-burning gas for older cars. "Arco gets most of the credit" for re-formulated gasoline being in the Clean Air Act, Dewton says.

The rest of the industry, well behind in reformulating gas, didn't appreciate Arco's role. The American Petroleum Institute waged a $1 million ad campaign pointing out that "no testing has been done to show 'Government Gas' is less polluting, more efficient or affordable."

The General Accounting Office (GAO) concluded in June 1990 that mass production was years away and would require substantial investment in new refinery equipment. "It could adversely affect small refiners, increase the cost of gasoline to consumers and require additional imports of crude oil."

Still, a reformulated gas provision was adopted by Congress as part of the Clean Air Act. Now, almost two years later, "We don't really know yet what reformulated gasoline is .... It's a big guess at this point," Dewton says.

"Reformulated gasolines are not the answer," Alson says. "Other fuels would be 80 to 90 percent cleaner."

NORTH TO ALASKA

President Bush also took special care of Arco in his national energy strategy. The cornerstone of his proposal -- and one of Bush's favorite causes -- was the opening of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR, or "An-war"). Administration and industry officials argued that ANWR's coastal plain represented the nation's last great hope for a large domestic oil find. Before George Bush took up residence in the White House the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) estimated the probability of recovering significant quantities of oil from ANWR at only 19 percent. But shortly after the administration released its energy proposal, Bush's BLM released new figures: a 46 percent chance of large recoveries.

When the Natural Resources Defense Council, a leading environmental group, charged that the new figures were politically motivated, Interior Department officials countered that they were based on "proprietary" oil industry data, which it refused to release.

Among those who would benefit most from the opening of ANWR: Arco, the second-largest oil producer in Alaska (after British Petroleum). In 1990 Arco netted $700 million from its Alaskan holdings. Arco's Greenstein says Cook "never remembers discussing ANWR with the president," adding that he had "no need to, because his position is so public."

As the Senate prepared to vote on ANWR, Bush held sessions in the Oval Office to lobby individual senators. But in the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and with strong opposition from environmentalists, the Senate defeated the measure.

Energy bills currently pending in the House and Senate lack an ANWR provision, but the Bush administration apparently has other plans. According to Becky Gay, ANWR coordinator for Alaska Gov. Walter Hickel, "The president and some congressmen have told us they'd be willing to look at ANWR in the context of a jobs bill." Gay described the state's $800,000 print advertising campaign, which in March urged Congress to open ANWR to drilling because of the jobs it would provide, as "just bolstering the president's efforts."

SEEING EYE TO EYE

One way the industry ma[de] its views known to Bush was through its official role in the administration: the National Petroleum Council (NPC), a federal advisory committee comprised of some 150 oil and gas executives appointed by the secretary of energy. This panel include[d] the top brass of several companies represented on Team 100: Amerada Hess, Arco, Fina, Michel T. Halbouty Energy, Hamilton Oil, Mesa, Occidental Petroleum, Phillips and Pruet Drilling. In 1990, when Congress was debating the Clean Air Act, Department of Energy Secretary James Watkins requested NPC studies on natural gas production and oil-refining methods. "I anticipate that the results of your work will be able to contribute significantly to the development of the Department's policies and programs," Watkins wrote to then-NPC chair Lod Cook.

In January 1991 Cook submitted to Watkins an NPC report calling for the creation of a "petroleum-related National Defense Executive Reserve," a group of oil-industry executives that would advise the government during emergencies. In fact, the Department of Energy had consulted key industry officials during the Persian Gulf crisis.

But standard conflict-of-interest laws restrict the government's capacity to employ or consult individuals who have a financial stake in the policy actions on which they are making decisions or offering advice. The NPC report complained that "existing laws make it difficult for companies within the petroleum industry to make a con-tribution to government."

Within months the Bush administration proposed legislation to give the president exclusive authority to waive such conflict-of-interest rules in times of national emergency. The proposal awaits further action.

SEND A CABLE

The name Bill Daniels may not be a household word, but it should be. As "the father of cable television," he sent the first TV signal from Colorado to Wyoming in 1953. With an estimated worth of $325 million, Daniels has been an active Bush supporter. He hosted a 1987 fundraiser for Bush's election at his Denver home, a 20,000-square-foot abode called Cableland, that hauled in more than $300,000. Daniels was a Team 100 donor in 1988 and has given another $124,000 in soft money since then. The biggest chunk -- $99,000 -- was given in March, when legislation to regulate the cable industry was chugging through Congress.

All told, cable interests gave $700,000 in soft money to help elect Bush in 1988 and more than $200,000 to the RNC since.

Daniels is known for his philanthropy: His $10 million donation to the University of Denver enabled it to incorporate ethics classes in its MBA program. Not long ago, he provided a job for President Bush's embattled son Neil. Embroiled in conflicts of interest while a director of Denver's now-defunct Silverado Banking Savings & Loan, Neil Bush recently became director of new business development for a consulting firm that is part of Daniels's cable empire.

A personal friend of the Bush family, Daniels has not hesitated to communicate his views to the president on the sticky question of whether cable TV should be "reregulated" -- industry lingo for bringing back some of the consumer rate protections lost when cable was deregulated during the Reagan years. Asked at the time of Neil Bush's hiring if he planned to speak to the president, Daniels emphatically said yes. But, he added, "I don't want anything from the White House. I have never asked a politician for a favor in my life."

Well, yes and no. In May 1990, when Congress was poised to pass legislation giving consumers some relief from sky-rocketing cable TV rates, Daniels wrote to Bush, "It is my hope that your administration would take a strong stand now against reregulation. If not momentum [for enactment] will build."

When momentum brought the bill to the Senate floor that September, the White House "played a real aggressive role in killing" it, says one Commerce Committee aide.

Also lobbying the Senate was Robert Mosbacher, then in charge of the Commerce Department, which advises the White House on telecommunications policy. In a letter to Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.), chair of the Commerce Committee, he declared, "Competition rather than regulation creates the most substantial benefits for consumers and the greatest opportunities for American industry."

In fact, notes Gene Kimmelman of the Consumer Federation of America. "There is nothing in this theory of competition for the consumer in the near or mid-term."

More than 99 percent of the nation's cable systems operate without direct competition; once one company has invested the millions of dollars it takes to lay copper wire, another company is not likely to do the same. Thus whoever holds the local franchise can charge whatever the market will bear. Not surprisingly, cable TV rates have soared in recent years -- last year at three times the rate of inflation.

State and local governments could regulate rates except for one thing. In more than 75 percent of all cases they are barred from doing so by the cable deregulation legislation enacted under President Reagan.

The Bush administration argues that competing technologies will control costs. But futuristic fiber optic telephone wiring, satellites and other delivery systems carry their own costs and face stiff barriers in a market dominated by a few giant cable operators.

Anyone lucky enough to be on the inside is guaranteed a profit. According to industry analysts, cable companies pay so little in overhead that nearly half of every dollar they take in is profit. Much of the rest typically goes toward interest payments on the massive loans cable operators take out to acquire the franchise and lay wire.

With all that money flowing around, cable companies are in an ideal position to buy time in Washington. Since 1989, when Congress began making noises about cable reregulation, the industry has poured more than $1 million into congressional campaign coffers.

Legislation to reregulate the industry has passed the Senate and is moving forward in the House. Bush has said he will veto it.

THE KRAVIS CONNECTION

Few things gladdened the hearts of those in the financial community more than President Bush's constant call to cut capital gains taxes-- undoing the work of his former boss, Ronald Reagan, who had virtually eliminated the tax break for capital gains in exchange for lower overall income tax rates in the 1986 Tax Reform Act. A reduction would have been a boon to financial interests across the board-old-line investment bankers and securities brokers, S&L and bank operators, buyout artists and corporate raiders. This is a group that has invested heavily in Bush: All told, Team 100 members and their companies who are in the money business have donated nearly $9 million in soft money to help Bush and to his party in 1988 and since [up through 1991].

Financial engineer Henry Kravis, who knows Bush personally because their fathers were friends, is the ring-leader. At the same time he was turning Wall Street upside-down with a form of corporate takeover dubbed the LBO (leveraged buyout), he dug into his own pocket and urged others to do so in support of the Bush regime. Kravis and his partners at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) contributed $505,000 to the Bush bid in 1988 and to the RNC since [up through 1991]. KKR's influence is magnified by the nearly $809,000 given by RJR Nabisco (which KKR controls) and RJR's executives to the 1988 Bush effort and GOP national committees.

Indeed, Kravis's ability to raise money for Bush is legendary. In 1987, he organized a Wall Street fundraiser that took in more than $500,000, and he served as New York finance co-chair of the '88 campaign. This election he's co-chairing the Bush-Quayle national finance committee.

Kravis told Sarah Bartlett, author of The Money Machine, a book on KKR, that Bush sends him handwritten notes all the time, adding, "He calls me and stuff, and we talk," often about financial issues.

Kravis's financial industry colleagues on Team 100 included:

• Goldman Sachs partners, three of whom gave $100,000 each in 1988, with one giving another $57,450 in soft money to the RNC since then [until 1991].

• Team 100 members Theodore and Nicholas Forstmann and Brian Little of the leveraged buyout firm Forstmann Little & Co., who together have given $505,000 in soft money to help Bush in '88 and Republican national committees through 1991.

• $100,000 donor Stephen Schwarzman of thc Blackstone Group. Morgan Stanley & Co. executives Joseph Fogg and Dudley Schoales and his wife, who have given $410,000 in soft money to the Bush bid and the RNC since. Cincinnati corporate raider Carl Lindner Jr., who is in a class by himself. He and his American Financial Corp., a holding company with insurance, banking and other subsidiaries, gave a whopping $845,460 to the Bush election bid in 1988 and Republican national party committees.

One top priority for these financiers is a cut in taxes on capital gains, or income earned on investments. And Bush has been most cooperative, having called on Congress repeatedly to bring back the tax break for capital gains that ended in 1986. He sent Congress a proposal earlier this year that would cut the capital gains tax rate from 28 percent to as low as 15 percent for those in the highest tax brackets. "We were happy with it," says Edward O'Brien, president of the Securities Industry Association, whose members include a number of firms represented on Team 100. Studies indicated the measure would have helped neither the economy nor the little guy. It provided an average tax reduction of $8,500 a year for those with incomes over $200,000 -- America's richest 1 percent -- while costing the government $15 billion in lost tax revenue over the following five years, according to Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation.

MONEY GAMBITS

Kravis and KKR are the undisputed masters of the LBO, a form of takeover financed by large amounts of debt in loans and junk bonds, and they have raked in billions of dollars by engineering these deals. Bought-out firms must work doggedly to reduce their debt, typically by selling assets, slashing jobs and cutting funds for research and development and capital improvements. Buyouts grew at a feverish pace through the '80s, but the biggest of all came in 1988 when KKR grabbed RJR Nabisco for $26 billion. Critics said these unproductive deals did little to help U.S. manufacturers compete in the world marketplace, and political pressure began mounting to crack down on them. At a pre-inaugural press conference, Bush indicated he might be willing to cut back corporate tax deductions that were fueling the buyout market.

Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady sounded a warning at congressional hearings a few weeks later. "I have a gnawing feeling that we are headed in the wrong direction," said Brady, "when so much of our young talent and the nation's financial resources are aimed at financial engineering while the rest of the world is laying the foundation for the future."

Encouraged, the House Ways and Means Committee developed some options to help curb the buyout mania. But -- to the certain pleasure of Wall Street-- the administration backed off. A Brady emissary, testifying nearly four months after Brady's telling comments, not only failed to offer specific suggestions on how to deal with the problem but rejected those of the committee as well. "Treasury's taken a vacation on this issue," said Rep. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.). Members of Congress had their own reasons to back down -- including the fact that many of their campaigns are also funded by financial interests -- so little was done.

"No special treatment was ever asked for or received by any of the contributors" from KKR, said a spokesperson for the donors.

Still, critics believe a different administration might have scrutinized KKR's doings more closely. One case in point: In February the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) surprised even antitrust experts by reversing an administrative judge's decision that would have undone a KKR takeover.

The chain of events began in 1987, when KKR took over the nation's largest glass container company, Owens-Illinois. Later that year, the bought-out Owens-Illinois went after Brockway, one of its main competitors. The FTC tried to block the merger with a court injunction but failed. Owens thus obtained control of about 40 percent of the glass container market.

An internal memo from an Owens official to its president establishes that the company went after Brockway to exert greater control over market prices, court documents show. In September 1989, an FTC administrative law judge found that the merger was likely to hurt consumers by making ptice fixing easier. Noting the glass container industry's history of antitrust violations, he ordered Owens to sell Brockway's glass container business within a year.

Owens appealed the order, meanwhile conducting business as it pleased, including shutting down some of Brockway's plants and putting thousands of people out of work. Two-and-a-half years went by.

Then in February 1992 a panel of FTC commissioners overturned the administrative judge's order and dismissed the complaint against Owens.

"To me it's a distressing decision," says Lawrence Sullivan, a professor at Southwestern University School of Law and author of a widely used textbook on antitrust. "If you have any merger policy that takes the problems of [market] concentration at all seri ously, this just doesn't pass muster .... The real motivation of the [corporate] decisionmakers is ignored [by the FTC] and it is assumed that their motivation is innocent, although it isn't."

A footnote: Late in 1991 a federal jury found Owens-Illinois, Brockway and one other glass container manufacturer guilty of price fixing from 1970-1987. The defendants won a new trial but settled the case in February.

BANKING ON DISASTER

A number of Bush's $100,000 donors cashed in on the $500 billion savings and loan disaster by snapping up government-seized thrift assets at fire-sale prices, a process likened to raiding a piggybank. Team 100 donors Robert Bass, Amway co-founder Jay Van Andel, cosmetics magnate Ronald Perelman, and mega-builders A. James Clark and Trammell Crow were among the major shareholders and officers of companies that cut "sweetheart deals" for thrift assets in late 1988, according to a Center for Responsive Law study. Every $1 the investors paid was worth $78 in assets and government benefits, according to congressional estimates.

Other high-flying Team 100 donors contributed to the S&L crisis and took a tumble when the disaster unfolded. In April, Team 100 member Charles Keating, former head of Lincoln Savings and Loan Association and its parent American Continental Corp., was sentenced to 10 years in prison on California securities fraud charges. The central figure in Capitol Hill's "Keating,Five" scandal await[ed] trial on federal charges. Meanwhile the federal bailout of Lincoln cost taxpayers about $2 billion.

Team 100 member Thomas Spiegel also has fared poorly. The U.S. Supreme Court recently refused to hear an appeal by the former Columbia Savings & Loan CEO of a regulatory order that requires him to post $21 million before facing a heating on charges that he looted the thrift. Regulators say he used the thrift's funds to pay for a luxurious lifestyle and loans to his friends. The bailout of Columbia was expected to cost taxpayers some $1.5 billion.

Columbia's downfall also involved the tangled dealings of Team 100 member Michael Parker, who contributed $100.000 in 1988. Parker founded two firms that both recently went bankrupt. Parker was sued by Columbia and arrested by the FBI on charges that he defrauded the thrift of as much as $1 million between 1983 and 1987. A bankruptcy examiner said Parker gambled away some of Columbia's money at Lake Tahoe. Parker is now free on $1 million bail, but a vice president of one of his companies last year pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion in the case.

ISN'T THIS ILLEGAL?

Corporations were barred from making campaign contributions in the wake of a 1904 presidential campaign scandal involving contributions from oil companies, railroads and insurance companies. Labor unions have been similarly barred since the 1940s. In Watergate's aftermath, Congress prohibited individuals from giving federal candidates more than $1,000 per election, and enacted a system of spending limits and public financing for presidential elections. The Supreme Court has upheld campaign contribution limits not only on grounds that they prevent corruption. "[O]f equal concern.., is the impact of the appearance of corruption stemming from public awareness of the opportunities for abuse inherent in a regime of large individual financial contributions," the court noted in the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision.

With all this, how did 249 people manage to give $100,000 apiece to support Bush's election? They gave through a convoluted system that critics say is nothing short of political money laundering.

Just after Bush's nomination in 1988, his campaign's finance chair, Robert Mosbacher, set up shop at the RNC, where he tapped a nationwide network of wealthy executives. They joined the elite Team 100 by giving at least $100,000. Team 100's money was channeled to key state GOP committees and spent on Bush campaign "ground war" activities such as get-out-the-vote drives.

The Dukakis campaign's finance chair, Robert Farmer, set up a similar $100,000 club -- in fact, several Team 100 donors gave equally to the Dukakis effort. If Michael Dukakis had been elected president, actions his administration took on behalf of his $100,000 donors in 1988 would have raised similar questions to those Bush now faces.

GOP officials claim that Team 100's contributions were raised to help the party, not elect Bush. But comments of some Team 100 donors make it clear they gave with Bush in mind.

California developer Kathryn Thompson described herself as "a Team 100 member, one of a group of individuals who have contributed $100,000 to the [RNC] in support of President Bush." Denver oil and gas magnate Bruce Benson -- who raised $1 million for Team 100, including $100,000 of his own -- describes Team 100 as "the best thing we ever did."

"I can ask somebody for $100,000 and tell them they can go see George Bush and have dinner at the White House, or I can ask for $5,000 and they can come see me," Benson says. "I think they'd rather give $100,000 and go to the White House." Benson gave another $120,000 to the GOP soft money fund [since 1988].

Both the Republicans and Democrats planned huge soft money fundraising drives for the 1992 presidential race. The Democrats upped the ante by seeking $200,000 donations.

As Republican party chair, Rich Bond helped oversee the new six-figure contribution drive. He was a different man from the Rich Bond who was Bush's deputy campaign manager in 1988. Before Mosbacher set up Team 100, Bond attacked the Democrats for raising $100,000 contributions to help elect Dukakis. "It's illegal on its face," Bond said then.

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